by Nichole Van
“C’mon, big guy,” she said, handing him a plate and sweeping a pile of papers out of the way on the table. “Eat up. You have to be starving.”
With a blink, he took the offered plate and sat down with a thud. Jasmine pursed her lips. Hard to say which specific thing had set him off.
The notion of the queen cooking? The idea of eating food from a box? Having to kick it in the twenty-first century with her for an undetermined amount of time? Low blood sugar?
They ate in silence for a few minutes. She pulled out her phone and reviewed her texts. Emme had messaged to say they arrived in New York and ‘thanks, Jas, for taking care of things.’ But the subtext was all wow-I-can’t-believe-you’re-stuck-with-that-loser-viscount-cause-he’s-just-ehw . . .
Not helping.
Dinner was better, however. The chicken korma was delicious, creamy with just the right amount of sweet. It was heaven with the heat and tang of the tikka masala. All sopped up with naan still hot and dripping with ghee.
Linwood dug in with gusto. Jasmine couldn’t fault his appetite.
“So why are you here, Miss Fleury?” he asked as he helped himself to another spoonful of korma. “Do you live here?”
That’s right. Somewhere in the orient-the-viscount-to-the-twenty-first-century-thing, they had never talked about her.
Well, for starters, there was one thing they needed to get straight—
“We need to get something straight?” Linwood asked, pausing with his fork midway to his mouth.
Drat. Jasmine cleared her throat.
“Look, if we are staying here together, we should start calling each other by our first names.” She pointed at herself. “Jasmine.” She pointed at him. “Timothy.”
He put down his fork and raised a haughty, pardon-me? eyebrow. Pure disdain.
She crossed her arms, matching his condescending eyebrow-ness. “It’s the twenty-first century way. And I do believe there is this old saying, perhaps you’ve heard it. When in Rome . . .” She rolled her hand. And so on.
He studied her for a moment, smoothing his face back to its impassive mask.
“You do realize that goes against every ounce of breeding beaten into my body, correct?” He sat back in his chair.
She stiffened.
. . . breeding beaten into my body . . .
What an interesting choice of words.
What was his story?
“Other than my sister, I have never referred to any woman by her given name,” he continued. “I shall probably not even refer to my wife—should I ever acquire one—by her given name. She would be ‘Lady Linwood’ or ‘my lady’ to me.”
Now it was Jasmine’s turn to sit back in her chair. Unsettled.
“That has to be about the saddest statement I have ever heard.” she said. “No wonder you’re so emotionally distant. You have this thick wall of protocol and manners which thoroughly bury all normal human interactions—”
“I beg your pardon?”
She leaned toward him, as if imparting a secret. “Look, we have this thing in the United States we call a chill pill—”
“A chill pill?”
“Exactly. It’s not a literal pill, but instead something you metaphorically take in order to force yourself to relax. To let go of stressors in your life.”
“Stressors?”
“Exactly. Things which cause stress. Or make you feel uptight.”
“Uptight? Like this shirt I am wearing?” He plucked at the form-fitting t-shirt. “Really, Miss Fleury, you need to speak English—”
“And you need to call me Jasmine.”
A pause.
“I . . . cannot do that.”
“Yes, you can. Take the chill pill and call me Jasmine. It’s not hard. Relax.”
Another long pause.
Linwood . . . ehr . . . Timothy, that is, angled his body toward her and stretched an arm along the back of the upholstered dining chair. The other hand beat a steady tattoo on the tabletop.
“Let me be sure I clearly understand your reasoning, Miss Fleury—”
“Jasmine.”
“Miss Fleury,” he said with deliberate emphasis. “According to you, due to the presence of a mystic time portal in the cellar of my brother-in-law’s dower house, I currently find myself two hundred years and several miles removed from my estate with no guarantee of returning any time in the near future. At this moment, my manners—the very behaviors which make up my breeding as a gentleman—are the only hope I have of maintaining my tenuous hold on sanity. So I ask you, Miss Fleury, to please allow me some modicum of self-preserving pride.”
Well.
If that didn’t just suck all the air out of the room.
Jasmine folded her arms and squirmed, tucking a foot underneath her.
Fine. Whatever.
“I still intend to call you Timothy,” she finally said. “It’s the American way.”
Arms still outstretched, he coolly nodded his head.
“But you should think about it. Taking that chill pill. I think you could do with a little R and R,” she said.
He raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“Rest and relaxation,” she clarified.
Both eyebrows went up. Ah.
Though aside from the drumming of his fingers, he didn’t look too stressed. Just sort of . . . vacant.
Like he was checked out.
She would expect him to be panicked or, at the very least, more visibly angry.
Everything he had ever known had been stripped from him. Surely there would be some sort of mental distress over it. A mourning of what he had always thought to be true.
But this tense . . . nothingness. It was not unlike . . .
Uh-oh.
What were the five stages of grief again? Marmi had always talked about them with one client or another—
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.
Though the denial phase could be more aptly named ‘shock and awe.’
And given how coolly his most honorable lordship, Viscount Linwood, had been eating his basmati rice . . .
She was going to place her check mark firmly in the little box next to ‘Denial.’ Not that his emotional health was her problem or anything. She wasn’t in charge of him. No mothering needed.
But . . .
“Soooo,” she said with deliberate casualness, “how are you . . . feeling? Anxious? Panicked?”
He studied her for a moment, fingers still drumming. And then smoothed his hand flat on the table. Quieting even that small sign of agitation.
Rock still.
“My emotions are as they always are . . . imperturbable.”
Imperturbable. Meaning . . . composed, calm, collected? Had she ever heard someone drop such a word into casual conversation?
And by imperturbable, did he mean numb? Anesthetized?
Wait—
“Anesthetized?” he asked, pondering the word. Probably breaking it into its respective parts. Did anyone else realize how freakishly smart he was? “That is an appropriate word, I suppose. You may describe me as such.”
And then, with eerie imperturbableness, he went back to eating his rice.
Chapter 11
Duir Cottage
The upper bedroom
March 21, 2015
She was drawing again. Miss Fleury. Jasmine.
Jasmine Flower. It was an appropriate name.
Timothy stood in the doorway of the bedroom, staring at the large canvas stretched along one edge of the room. It was about four feet high and probably ten feet long. What were her intentions with it?
The crib in the corner proclaimed this to be the baby’s room.
Arthur.
James had a son. Named after his brother and grandfather.
Why did seeing James’ life here cause something pained to ripple through his chest? A longing. Almost like . . . envy.
That morning, Timothy had awakened to brief disorientation. No footman bringing in hot chocolat
e and a buttery scone, stirring the hearth fire to life.
No.
His bedroom was already suitably warm. And, given that Queen Elizabeth would fry her own eggs, it seemed unlikely anyone would cook breakfast for him.
He had availed himself of the shower again and had successfully limited his mathematical mind to innocuously calculating the trajectories of the water jets instead of fixating on the mechanics behind the shimmering overhead lights. He was determined to resist this era and its siren-like alluring machinery.
Though he rubbed his stubbled chin in regret. How did men shave in this age without the help of a valet? But there were no servants here. His entire way of life upended. Just as Kinningsley had become a factory.
And with that thought, the terrible chest-crushing panic returned. After a few tense moments of concentrated breathing, he forced it back, finding instead that wonderful sense of being anesthetized—lovely word that.
Thank goodness.
Miss Fleury had left dark trousers, a shirt and a jacket upon his bed while he was in the bathroom. All in the modern style he had seen James and Marc wearing, though perhaps a little more tailored.
The ensemble was not entirely lacking in merit. The shirt, a pale blue color, had a marvelous subtle sheen to it and the gray jacket molded suitably well to his shoulders.
It would suffice for now.
She had also returned his blue coat, dry and no worse for wear. Thankfully, his gear was still in the pocket. He had slipped it into the jacket he currently wore before tracking down Miss Fleury in baby Arthur’s room.
The room was cheery and flooded with light and, blessedly, somewhat neater than the kitchen area. Though like downstairs, there were those same mysterious sheets of paper attached here and there on the walls, each featuring a different saying.
One stood out:
Sometimes good things fall apart, so better things can fall together.
Did she believe this drivel? What utter nonsense.
Miss Fleury had her back to him and not wanting to startle her, he rapped a knuckle on the door frame.
She turned around, greeting him with a wan smile.
Her hair was piled haphazardly on top of her head with curls escaping here and there, a wide sheer strip of fabric wrapped around her crown to hold most of the mass back from her face. Though she still sported trousers, they were thankfully loose and silken, their bright blue color matching her eyes.
No, her clothing had seemingly swapped places.
Now it was her white shirt which was skin tight with a low scooping neckline and sleeves extending to her wrists. Showing quite clearly exactly how much of a woman she truly was. Had she been wearing such a shirt yesterday, he would not have thought her a child for even a fraction of a second.
Honestly, did the woman have any pity on him?
She raked her eyes up and down his attire.
“You clean up good,” was her cryptic remark.
Timothy ran a self-conscious hand over his chin. He hated having to admit he had never shaved himself. But if he were going to be presentable . . .
“Thank you . . . I think. Though I shall need to find myself a valet or, at the very least, a barber.”
She paused. And then popped her hip to the right and cocked her head. A sly grin spreading.
“Riiiiight. Because you really don’t know how to shave . . .”
He chose to ignore the comment and merely glanced about the room instead. Tried to control that damn panic which threatened again.
Be numb. Anesthetized.
She took pity on him.
“I’ll consider getting you a razor, some shaving cream and a YouTube video. But I’m making no promises.”
He turned his eyes back to her. Her words made no sense—
“A suitably trained valet should be sufficient, Miss Fleury.”
A beat.
“Yeah, I’m not sure valets even exist anymore. Well, besides people who park cars for a living. And I know you don’t mean that sort of valet. I could probably locate a stylist for you . . . I’ll have to ask James. Though you might want to consider keeping the stubble. It’s not a bad look on you.”
“Sarcasm, Miss Fleury?”
She cocked a surprised eyebrow. Blinked. “No. Just . . . stating a fact.”
She turned back to . . . whatever it was she was doing. There were sketches on the floor and taped to the far wall. More knights and ladies.
“You still have not told me why you are here,” he said.
She shrugged and then stood, still facing away from him, hands on hips, foot tapping. Shaking her head, she started to mutter. It was something she did quite frequently.
“Well, you see, my boyfriend, Mike, dumped me over Christmas—which was as awful as it sounds—and then the man got engaged to some dumb floozy just three months later. Which is how I ended up here, because Emme knows I have this habit of running away when my emotional life is all whacked. It was all fine and dandy until Mike called with glee to tell me I’d lost my family too and hey-isn’t-that-just-so-interesting?”
She wiggled her fingers in the air and then kept right on talking.
“Okay, so maybe it wasn’t exactly with glee, but he could have been a teensy bit nicer about it all. I mean, we’re talking my entire sense of self-identity here. And then James gets his man, Cobra, to track down my family—which is fine and all, but how far can you trust someone who willingly names themselves after a snake? It’s this weird combo of too-precious and totally creepy—”
“Boyfriend?” What did that word mean? Not to mention— “How does one lose a family?”
She whirled back to him, lovely eyes so very, very wide. And then groaned, tipping her head into her hands, muttering words which sounded suspiciously like not again.
“What I meant to say is that I’m an artist.” She lifted her head. “I am a painter and Emme and James hired me to create a work for little Arthur.” She spread a hand, indicating the long canvas and room, in general.
“Of knights and ladies?”
“Exactly. What else would I draw for a baby named Arthur Knight?” She shrugged. “It is to be a King Arthur inspired series of scenes, depicting the feats of the Knights of the Round Table. Herefordshire was part of the historical kingdom of the Britons, not to mention Caerleon and the castles of southern Wales which are only an hour away by car—so I plan to use visual references from the area.”
“You do realize that Arthur was most likely more Roman than British in origin, right?
A pause. “Well . . . I suppose. I think I saw some History Channel special on it—”
“The true King Arthur probably looked nothing like all these sketches of medieval knights.”
“Well, aren’t you a Debbie Downer?”
“Pardon?”
“Never mind.” She waved a careless hand. “The mural is meant to play on the baby’s name and capture the romance of a bygone era—”
“The Middle Ages was hardly a romantic time period—”
“Are you deliberately trying to be a kill-joy?” She stopped, hand flying to her hip again. Eyebrow raised.
“Not at all. Merely pointing out inconsistencies. Have you visited Wales yet?”
“I’m . . . uh . . . putting together a plan.” She sighed and pursed her lips. “So, what are your plans for the day?”
Before he could answer, she glanced down at the drawings at her feet and then bent to rearrange them, muttering again. “Have you checked the portal yet? Because, you definitely need to make it a point to check that portal every chance you get. Like three thousand times a day. At minimum. Actually, you probably should just camp out down there. I will toss you the occasional cheeseburger and fries. Cause you never know when the portal might let you through and, heaven knows, I plan on throwing a huge block party as soon as it does—”
“I have already checked the portal three times this morning.”
Miss Fleury’s head snapped back, eyes whirling toward him.
She pinched her lips tightly together. Had she not realized she was talking aloud?
Silence.
“Right.” She stood, brushing her hands down her loose trousers. “Uhmmm, so as I was saying, what were you planning on doing today?”
“I was considering utilizing the car—”
Up went her eyebrow. “The car? You do realize they’re not terribly simple to drive, right?”
He matched her eyebrow with one of his own. “It is an inanimate machine, Miss Fleury. It is not like controlling a spirited horse—”
“There is no way I am going to be responsible for letting you get behind the wheel of that high-performance, manual transmission, insanely expensive, just-waiting-to-be-dinged vehicle parked out back. James would murder me. With a blunt knife. In cold blood.” She emphasized her point by moving her pencil across her neck in a cutting motion.
Timothy blinked. Knight was hardly the type to be so concerned about a mere possession.
Reading his disbelief, she continued, “That car cost well over a hundred thousand pounds, Timothy. I’m terrified to so much as breathe on it.”
A hundred thousand pounds? Timothy felt the world spin.
“Such a figure is breathtaking, Miss Fleury.”
The sum was . . . staggering. For a mere method of conveyance? Surely, all those cars were not that expensive.
She froze, clearly startled by his reaction. “Well, I mean, I’m sure inflation has been a factor—”
“Inflation?” He fought the image of a car filling with gas like a hot air balloon. That was surely not what she meant—
“Like the value of money going down. Wait, let me check it for you.” She pulled her telephone out of a pocket and then spoke to it. “Okay Google. How much is one hundred thousand pounds in eighteen fifteen money?”
Silence and then a tinny voice sounded from the box: “One hundred thousand pounds in twenty fifteen would be the equivalent of three thousand pounds in eighteen fifteen.”
Miss Fleury shrugged as if to say, There. You see.
“Three thousand pounds? So roughly the cost of a lovely pair of matched bays and a high-perch phaeton?”
Now it was her turn to look confused. “Sure.”
A beat.